Looking back at 2020: What a year for the US streaming market

Despite - or thanks to – the COVID-19 situation, 2020 has been the most lucrative year for the US VOD market. On the SVOD (subscription video on demand) side, two major services launched: HBO Max from WarnerMedia and Peacock from Comcast.Even though the two services both faced a chaotic launch – the branding confusion with HBO Now, the initial no-deal situation with Roku and Amazon, and the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympic Games, which were supposed to be the springboards of Peacock’s launch - they managed to capture a significant chunk of the SVOD growth in the US. Other services unfortunately failed in consolidating their presence in the market: the stillborn QUIBI, which had positioned itself as the mobile-only answer to an overcrowded SVOD market, showed a bad timing at launch and an unconvincing content offer until it finally shut down in October. On the AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) side, 2020 was indeed a milestone: the market now reckons more than 50 active AVOD services, a dozen of them gathering more than 20 million monthly active users. This success can be explained by the saturation of the SVOD market and by the multiplication of premium ad-supported offers, such as Hulu or Peacock, or the soon to be launched HBO Max AVOD tier. In the end, 2020 turned out to be a pivot year for the streaming strategies of media giants, and 2021 is expected to be even bigger, especially on the AVOD and on the PVOD (premium video on demand) side.